The Honourable Minister John Day tonight announced
Michelle de Krester’s Questions of Travel as winner
of the 2012 Premier’s Prize worth
$25,000.

507 entries were
received.

The total prize money was $120,000.

Western Australian Premier's Book Awards
- 2012 Winners

Premier's
Prize

Michelle de
KretserQuestions of Travel Allen &
UnwinYet again, Michelle de Kretser delivers an
extraordinary novel, possibly her best yet. Topical in its
subject matter of asylum and belonging, deft and delicate in its
portrayal of tragedy, Questions of Travel has already garnered
significant acclaim nationally and internationally, and deservedly so.

People's Choice
Award

Deborah ForsterThe Meaning
Of GraceRandom House AustraliaA simple
premise is handled with assurance by Deborah Forster in The Meaning of
Grace, only her second novel. A mother's cancer diagnosis
brings together her three adult children and Forster scrapes back their
relationships to the bone with both compassion and generosity but
certainly no sugar-coating. The ease of the story-telling belies the
skill behind the writing.

Non-fiction

Roger AverillExile: The Lives and Hopes
of Werner PelzTransit LoungeWritten with
great tenderness, this joint portrait of biographer and subject explores
their relationship. Slowly building in complexity and power, Averill’s
is a compelling journey of discovery into Werner Pelz’s life and the
existential questions that provide it, and his own, with
meaning.

Young
Adult

Margo LanaganSea Hearts Allen
& UnwinIn an abuse of her special inherited
powers, the ‘witch’ Misskaella sings forth beautiful, compliant brides
from the bodies of seals for the shallow men of Rollrock Island.
Recreating the legend of the selkies, Margo Lanagan in Sea Hearts weaves
a tale of cruelty, revenge, greed, human frailty, filial love and
redemption. Six distinct voices, spanning three generations, narrate the
context and describe the consequences to nature and community life on
the island. The orchestrated plot surges to a dramatic, shocking climax,
before a dawn-like denouement which is just as powerful in its
tranquillity and hope. Lanagan presents a fantasy that enthrals, in a
language that sings and
delights.

Poetry

Robert GrayCumulusJohn Leonard
PressRobert Gray is a long established and
significant voice in Australian poetry. This collection includes work
from his eight previous books – often significantly revised – as well as
a new section of poems. This extensive range displays a virtuosic grasp
on poetic form, revealing a lightness of touch, a luminosity of
perception as well as an eye for experimentation and the intellectual.
Cumulus is a compelling journey through the career of one of Australia’s
leading
poets.

Scripts

Ingle KnightThe Fremantle
CandidatePrickly Pear PlayscriptsIn this
engaging play, Knight creates a putative friendship between
Western Australia’s Mark Twain-like popular essayist (though
also patrician academic), Walter Murdoch, and the Labor Party’s flawed,
but soon-to-be severely tested, war-time Prime Minister, John Curtin.
Their encounter is situated at a pivotal and dramatic moment of personal
and political crisis. The deceptive ease of this
theatrical construction reveals a playwright at the peak of his
craft.

WA
History

Kurlumarniny: We come from
the DesertAboriginal Studies PressThis is
a story about an ordinary man involved in great
movements close to his people. This is his autobiography, a tale of
everyday
life and significant moments over sixty years in Western Australia’s
Pilbara.
It is also a story told in two languages, his own Nyangumarta and
English, for
he is a passionate advocate for indigenous languages. His
story, then,
combines an absorbing narrative with a powerful political message about
Aboriginal history and Aboriginal language.

Children’s Literature

Stephen
HerrickPookie Aleera Is Not My BoyfriendUniversity
of Queensland PressSet in a remote outback town,
this gentle and humorous verse novel is mainly narrated by the
schoolchildren of class 6B. With a deft and compassionate
touch the author allows each character to emerge as a vividly drawn
individual. Themes of kindness and warmth, grief and loss interweave
this beautifully written story.

Peter MacinnisAustralian Backyard
NaturalistNational Library of
AustraliaThis superb, comprehensive and engaging
non-fiction book explores a myriad of facts about backyard creatures
both obvious and obscure. Accessible and child-friendly, with
plentiful photographs and diagrams, and enriched with an extensive
index, references and ideas for personal projects, this scientifically
based natural history book will keep its readers both entranced and
informed.

Digital
Narrative

David P ReiterMy Planets
Reunion Memoir http://ipoz.biz/myplanetsDavid
P Reiter's provocative fictional multimedia memoir combines a textual
narrative with a rich tapestry of audio, video and animation to explore
the meaning of family, connectivity and identity. The planets provide
both a narrative structure and a shifting series of perspectives asking
not just how we understand who we are, but how that story shifts with
different sets of eyes. This is a profound digital narrative which both
makes the most of the various possibilities of the digital realm whilst
weaving a provocative, engaging and all too human
tale.

Fiction

Michelle de
KretserQuestions of Travel Allen &
UnwinYet again, Michelle de Kretser delivers an
extraordinary novel, possibly her best yet. Topical in its
subject matter of asylum and belonging, deft and delicate in its
portrayal of tragedy, Questions of Travel has already garnered
significant acclaim nationally and internationally, and deservedly so.